EARTHQUAKES
EARLY in the morning all the neighbors were talking, from door to door,
on the same subject. It seemed they had had a narrow escape during the
night. Jacques said that about two o’clock he had been awakened by the
bellowing of his cattle, repeated two or three times. Even Azor himself,
the good Azor, so peaceful in his stall when there was nothing serious
to disturb him, had bellowed mournfully. Jacques had risen and lighted
his lantern, but had been unable to discover what caused the trouble
with the animals.
Mother Ambroisine, who slept with one eye open, told a longer tale. She
had heard the dishes rattling on the kitchen dresser; some plates had
even rolled off and broken in falling to the ground. Mother Ambroisine
was thinking it was perhaps some misdeed of the cat’s, when it seemed to
her that strong arms seized the bed and shook it twice from head to foot
and from foot to head. It was over in the twinkling of an eye. The
worthy woman was so frightened that, throwing the covers over her head,
she commended her soul to God.
Mathieu and his son were away at the time: they were returning home from
the fair, and were making the journey by night. The weather was fine—no
wind, and bright moonlight. They were chatting about their affairs when
a dull, deep noise was heard, coming from under the ground. It sounded
like the roar of the big mill-dam. At the same moment they staggered as
if the ground had been giving way under them. Then nothing more. The
moon continued to shine, the night was calm and serene. It was so soon
over that Mathieu and his son wondered whether they had not dreamed it.
These were among the more serious incidents related. Meanwhile there was
passing from mouth to mouth, moving some to incredulous smiles and
others to grave reflections, the terrible word “earthquake.”
In the evening Uncle Paul was surrounded by his auditors, eager for some
explanation of the great news of the day.
“Is it true, Uncle,” asked Jules, “that the earth sometimes trembles?”
“Nothing is truer, my dear child. Sometimes here, sometimes elsewhere,
suddenly there is a movement of the ground. In our privileged countries
we are far from having any exact idea of these terrible agitations of
the earth. If once in a while a slight trembling is felt, it is talked
of for days as a curiosity; then it is forgotten. Many tell to-day of
the events of the past night without attaching much importance to them,
not knowing that the force revealed to us by a light movement of the
earth can, in its brutal power, bring about frightful disasters. Jacques
has told you of the bellowing of the cattle and Azor’s outcry. Mother
Ambroisine has described to you her fright when her bed was shaken
twice. In all that there is nothing very terrifying; but earthquakes are
not always harmless. Alas, no; and may God preserve us from ever
undergoing the sad experience!”
“Is an earthquake, then, very serious?” Jules again inquired. “For my
part, I thought it only meant a few plates broken and some furniture
displaced.”
“It seems to me,” said Claire, “that if the movement were strong enough
houses would fall down. But Uncle is going to tell us about a violent
earthquake.”
“Earthquakes are often preceded by subterranean noises, a dull rumbling
that swells, abates, swells again, as if a storm were bursting in the
depths of the earth. At this rumbling, full of menacing mysteries, every
creature becomes quiet, mute with fear, and every one turns pale. Warned
by instinct, animals are struck with stupor. Suddenly the earth shivers,
bulges up, subsides again, whirls, cracks open, and discloses a yawning
gulf.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Claire exclaimed. “And what becomes of the people?”
“You will see what becomes of them in these terrible catastrophes. Of
all the earthquakes felt in Europe, the most terrible was that which
ravaged Lisbon in 1775, on All Saints’ Day. No danger appeared to menace
the festal town, when suddenly there burst from under-ground a rumbling
like continuous thunder. Then the ground, shaken violently several
times, rose up, sank down, and in a moment the populous capital of
Portugal was nothing but a heap of ruins and dead bodies. The people
that were still left, seeking refuge from the fall of the ruins, had
retired to a large quay on the seashore. All at once the quay was
swallowed up in the waters, dragging with it the crowd and the boats and
ships moored there. Not a victim, not a piece of wreck came back to
float on the surface. An abyss had opened, swallowing up waters, quay,
ships, people, and, closing up again, kept them for ever. In six minutes
sixty thousand persons perished.
“While that was happening at Lisbon and the high mountains of Portugal
were shaking on their bases, several towns of Africa—Morocco, Fez,
Mequinez—were overthrown. A village of ten thousand souls was swallowed
up with its entire population in an abyss suddenly opened and suddenly
closed.”
“Never, Uncle, have I heard of such terrible things,” declared Jules.
“And I laughed,” said Emile, “when Mother Ambroisine told us of her
fright. It was nothing to laugh at. If it had been God’s will, our
village might last night have disappeared from the earth with us all, as
did that one in Africa.”
“Listen to this, too,” Uncle Paul continued. “In February, 1783, in
Southern Italy, convulsions began that lasted four years. During the
first year alone nine hundred and forty-nine were counted. The surface
of the ground was wrinkled in moving waves like the surface of a stormy
sea, and on this unstable ground people felt nauseated as if on the deck
of a vessel. Sea-sickness reigned on land. At every undulation, the
clouds, really immobile, seemed to move bruskly, just as they do at sea
when we are on a vessel tossed by the winds. Trees bowed in the
terrestrial wave and swept the earth with their tops.
“In two minutes the first shock overthrew the greater part of towns,
villages, and small boroughs of Southern Italy, as well as of Sicily.
The whole surface of the country was thrown into confusion. In several
places the ground was creviced with fissures, resembling on a large
scale the cracks in a pane of broken glass. Vast tracts of ground, with
their cultivated fields, their dwellings, vines, olive-trees, slid down
the mountain-sides and went considerable distances, to settle finally on
other sites. Here, hills split in two; there, they were torn from their
places and transported to some other part. Elsewhere, there was nothing
to uphold the ground, and it was engulfed in yawning abysses, taking
with it dwellings, trees, and animals, which were never seen again; in
still other places, deep funnels full of moving sand opened, forming
presently vast cavities that were soon converted into lakes by the
inrush of subterranean waters. It is estimated that more than two
hundred lakes, ponds, and marshes were thus suddenly produced.
“In certain places the ground, softened by waters turned from their
channels or brought from the interior by the crevices, was converted
into torrents of mud that covered the plains or filled the valleys. The
tops of trees and the roofs of ruined farm buildings were the only
things to be seen above this sea of mud.
“At intervals sudden quakes shook the ground to a great depth. The
shocks were so violent that street pavements were torn from their beds
and leaped into the air. The masonry of wells flew out from below the
surface in one piece, like a small tower thrown up from the earth. When
the ground rose and split open, houses, people, and animals were
instantly swallowed up; then, the ground subsiding again, the crevice
closed once more, and, without leaving a vestige, everything
disappeared, crushed between the two walls of the abyss as they drew
together. Some time afterward, when, after the disaster, excavations
were made in order to recover valuable lost objects, the workmen
observed that the buried buildings and all that they contained were one
compact mass, so violent had been the pressure of this sort of vise
formed by the two edges of the closed-up crevice.
“The number of persons who perished in these terrible circumstances is
estimated at eighty thousand.
“Most of these victims were buried alive under the ruins of their
houses; others were consumed by fires that sprang up in these ruins
after each shock; others, fleeing across the country, were swallowed up
in the abysses that opened under their feet.
“The sight of such calamities ought to have awakened pity in the hearts
of barbarians. And yet—who would believe it?—except for a very few acts
of heroism, the conduct of the people was most infamous. The Calabrian
peasants ran to the towns, not to give help, but to pillage. Without any
concern about the danger, they traversed the streets in the midst of
burning walls and clouds of dust, kicking and robbing the victims even
before the breath had left their bodies.”
“Miserable creatures!” cried Jules. “Horrid rascals! Ah, if I had only
been there!”
“If you had been there, what would you have done, my poor child? There
were plenty there with as good hearts and better fists than yours, but
they could do nothing.”
“Are those Calabrians very wicked?” asked Emile.
“Wherever education has not been introduced there are brutal natures
that, in time of trouble, spring up, no one knows whence, and frighten
the world with their atrocities. Another story will teach you more of
the Calabrian peasants.”
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